I had already planned to write a post about Twitter acting as a facilitator and the unfortunate events in China today re-affirmed what I was going to say.

Back in February I posted:

“Twitter is more the facilitator of communication rather than the end channel so it is probably better to take deeper discussion and analysis away from this environment in order to effectively extend a particular conversation.”

With recent events this has never been more apparent. There have been complaints about Twitter as a medium being limited but such complaintsalso show Twitter’s true nature, for example:

Exactly. You can’t talk politics in 140 characters. It’s simply not possible. Must be done in person over beer.

Twitter is not intended as a public discussion forum but is a way of bringing people together, breaking news and spreading the word so that the conversation can be shared and then discussed in the most appropriate place - FriendFeed comments or blogs, for example. Admittedly it has moved on from its initial ’status update’ beginnings and, as people find more uses for